Bats, bats, and more bats: A perfect beginning

I have arrived! I have spent the last four days in Melbourne, and it has been such a wonderful time so far. I arrived in Sydney early Saturday morning, and despite all my worries about my baggage things went very smoothly. I did have to collect my checked bags and go through customs, but it was quite easy and painless. I stood in line with my bags in front of my while a cute Beagle-Basset hound mix came down the line sniffing all the bags. He paused for a moment at mine but then moved on and I was through. Virgin Australia did re-check my bags and they did weigh them but they apparently didn't care much about the weight as long as each bag wasn't over 100kg. So all my worrying was for nothing, like I thought it would be. I arrived at the Melbourne airport at 11:00am and met up with Lindy Lumsden from the Department of Sustainability and Environment who has been one of my contacts in Australia throughout the Fulbright process. She met me when I came off the plane and was holding a sign with my name on it. I've always wanted to be met like that! She drove me to her place in the country outside Melbourne and I immediately fell in love with the area. It looks a lot like central Texas where I've done my bat research and it felt like home. When we got to her place I settled in and we took a walk through a nearby park (it was a tad chilly, probably mid-50s Farenheit, as it is late winter here), where I saw my first kangaroos! It was so amazing to be surrounded by so many new sights and sounds. The birds sounded so exotic to me, even though I know they are common and familiar to everyone here. In the evening I got to help with a chore at Lindy's house: feeding the four bats she has in her care! I couldn't have been more thrilled! When she handed me the first one (a Yellow-bellied sheathtail bat (Saccolaimus flaviventris)) I was amazed at how large she was (about 4 inches long) and how docile she was. In all my previous experiences handling bats, they have been squirmy and biting and screeching. This one just sat in my hand and looked up at me with her jet-black eyes! I didn't even need to keep her from flying away. Apparently these guys are normally pretty docile, even in the wild. Lindy rescued and rehabilitated these bats and now takes them on public talks, so they are used to being handled and being in the spotlight. I fed her mealworms, which she gently ate right out of my fingers. I then fed another sheathtail and then an Eastern free-tail bat (Mormopterus sp.) named Grumpy, which was over 21 years old! It's hard to believe that that little bat is as old as I am. Feeding the bats was definitely the highlight of my day (besides arriving in Australia, of course!).
 

I woke up Sunday morning at 9:30am after about 13 hours of dead sleep, feeling ready to start my first full day in Australia. I had managed to stay up until 8:30pm the night before, despite being physically exhausted by that time. When I woke up I felt pretty refreshed and didn't feel too many effects from jet lag. Lindy, her partner Paul, and I headed out to the nearby town of Bendigo to see their colony of Grey-headed flying foxes (Pteropus poliocephalus). There are a few thousand in the colony now, although there used to be nearly 30,000. They were hanging in the trees within a patch of public garden. They were congregated within this area and not in the surrounding public park because although the park had the same types of trees, it did not have the understory vegetation that the garden had. Apparently the bats like not only these tyypes of trees but also the humidity that the understory in the garden creates. Some of the bats were up and about, grooming, squablling, and flying about, while others slept with their wings wrapped around themselves. Some interesting facts about these guys:

1. Because Melbourne is on the edge of their temperature tolerance range (it's almost too cold for them here), they sometimes defoliate the trees so they can more easily bask in the sun.

2. The more dominant individuals roost higher up in the canopy, and when they defecate the guano falls on the ones below! Flying foxes do hang by their thumbs, right-side up, to go to the bathroom.

3. Flying foxes skim over the water in ponds, streams, etc. to drink, but they don't actually drink the water straight from the pond. They get their chest fur wet and then lap the water from the fur.

Seeing flying foxes in the wild was such an amazing experience. It's one thing to see a few behind glass at a zoo, but it's a whole other thing to see them in their natural habitat (well, not exactly "natural," as this colony is in the middle of a town). So far my time in Australia has been full of batty adventures and I know I'm in store for a lot more over the next year!